I just did a tour of the country looking for potential Independent Congressional candidates.
One highlight of my trip was a discussing with an Executive of a health insurance claims processing company. When I asked him how bad would a single payer, government run, system hurt his business; he just laughed. He educated me on the fact that his company and most of the big insurance companies would benefit from a single payer system.
See Medicaid and Medicare claims aren't processed by a building full of civil servants. No, the government subcontracts it out to the insurance companies to manage. The single payer system would end up being the same model. This part of the business is the most profitable and consistent. Unlike the insurance side where there is a lot of risk, this side of the business is easily forcasted. See, the risk now would fall on the tax payers and be managed by the government. This will be a huge win fall for a few of the insurance companies and the rest will fall off planet, reducing any potential competition completely.
So, in the end, are we really going to be making the big bad Insurance Industry pay? Or, are we going to do what we did on Wall Street? Let the government pick the winners and the losers and let the average U.S. citizen pay the price.
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The problems with a single-payer system are manifold (1) there is no device for cost-control in the single-payer system (2) we already have a single-payer system for the elderly called medicare, a single-payer system will essentially be medicare for all and we have trouble paying for that! (3) it is just an insurance system and does nothing about the fragmented system of delivering health care.
ReplyDeleteThere is a better plan. Check out the Guaranteed Healthcare Access Plan at http://healthcareguaranteed.org. The plan is simple, issue all legal residents universal health vouchers to enroll in private medical and dental plans offered by insurance companies. All insurance companies will be required to enroll all those who wish to enroll regardless of pre-existing medical condition. The program will replace Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP as well as our employer-based system of health insurance. The program will be financed by a dedicated Value Added Tax will be limited to the funds generated by the VAT. The VAT will also remind everyone that their health care isn't free.